Author of the extremely popular "Dear Economist" column in Financial Times, Tim Harford reveals the economics behind everyday phenomena in this highly entertaining and informative book. Can a book about economics be fun to read? It can when Harford takes the reins, using his trademark wit to explain why it costs an arm and a leg to buy a cappuccino and why it's nearly impossible to purchase a decent used car.

The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run - or Ruin - an Economy

A provocative and lively exploration of the increasingly important world of macroeconomics, by the author of the bestselling The Undercover Economist. Thanks to the worldwide financial upheaval, economics is no longer a topic we can ignore. From politicians to hedge-fund managers to middle-class IRA holders, everyone must pay attention to how and why the global economy works the way it does.

The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World

Life sometimes seems illogical. Individuals do strange things: take drugs, have unprotected sex, mug each other. Love seems irrational, and so does divorce. On a larger scale, life seems no fairer or easier to fathom - why do some neighborhoods thrive and others become ghettos? Why is racism so persistent? Why is your idiot boss paid a fortune for sitting behind a mahogany altar? Thorny questions, and you might be surprised to hear the answers coming from an economist.

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

In this groundbreaking work, Tim Harford shows us a new and inspiring approach to solving the most pressing problems in our lives. Harford argues that today’s challenges simply cannot be tackled with ready-made solutions and expert opinions; the world has become far too unpredictable and profoundly complex. Instead, we must adapt. Deftly weaving together psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, physics, and economics, along with compelling stories of hard-won lessons learned in the field, Harford makes a passionate case for the importance of adaptive trial-and-error....

Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy

Pietra Rivoli is an economics professor at Georgetown University, where the question "Who made your T-shirt?" set her on a quest. On her journey she found that globalization is just as much about history and politics as it is about economics.

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans - predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth - and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.

Basic Economics, Fifth Edition: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy

In this fifth edition of Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell revises and updates his popular book on commonsense economics, bringing the world into clearer focus through a basic understanding of the fundamental economic principles and how they explain our lives. Drawing on lively examples from around the world and from centuries of history, Sowell explains basic economic principles for the general public in plain English.

The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street

Chronicling the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox’s The Myth of the Rational Market is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the perils and possibilities of risk. The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through the Great Depression and into the financial calamity of today.

Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain

The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics changed the way we see the world, exposing the hidden side of just about everything. Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and offer a blueprint for an entirely new way to solve problems. The topics range from business to philanthropy to sports to politics, all with the goal of retraining your brain.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Eliot Rosewater, a drunk volunteer fireman and president of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature, with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. The result is Kurt Vonnegut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to.

Trillion Dollar Economists: How Economists and Their Ideas Have Transformed Business

Trillion Dollar Economists explores the prize-winning ideas that have shaped business decisions, business models, and government policies, expanding the popular idea of the economist's role from one of forecaster to one of innovator. Written by the former Director of Economic Research at Bloomberg Government, the Kauffman Foundation and the Brookings Institution, this audiobook describes the ways in which economists have helped shape the world.

Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History

What kind of mischief can result from misunderstanding the monetary system? The work of 2 obscure Scottish chemists destroyed the presidential prospects of William Jennings Bryan, as well as Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to appease a few senators from the American West who helped communism triumph in China, are just 2 such mishaps cited in this important work by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. This accessible work also provides an in-depth discussion on the creation of value.

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don't

Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger - all by the time he was 30. The New York Times now publishes FiveThirtyEight.com, where Silver is one of the nation’s most influential political forecasters. Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data.

The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter

The world’s most trusted guide for leaders in transition. Transitions are a critical time for leaders. In fact, most agree that moving into a new role is the biggest challenge a manager will face. While transitions offer a chance to start fresh and make needed changes in an organization, they also place leaders in a position of acute vulnerability. Missteps made during the crucial first three months in a new role can jeopardize or even derail your success.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

In The Tipping Point, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell looks at why major changes in society happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a few fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave, or a satisfied customer fill the empty tables of a new restaurant. These are social epidemics, and the moment when they take off, when they reach their critical mass, is the Tipping Point.

SuperFreakonomics

SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as: How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa? What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common? Can eating kangaroo save the planet? Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else.

Freakonomics: Revised Edition

Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life, from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing, and whose conclusions turn the conventional wisdom on its head. Thus the new field of study contained in this audiobook: Freakonomics. Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.

The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves

Does the chance of getting caught affect how likely we are to cheat? How do companies pave the way for dishonesty? Does collaboration make us more honest or less so? Does religion improve our honesty? Most of us think of ourselves as honest, but, in fact, we all cheat. From Washington to Wall Street, the classroom to the workplace, unethical behavior is everywhere. None of us is immune whether it's the white lie to head off trouble or padding our expense reports.

Seven Days in the Art World

In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life.

Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data

From batting averages and political polls to game shows and medical research, the real-world application of statistics continues to grow by leaps and bounds. How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you'll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more.

Legacies of Great Economists

When it comes to economics and economic theory, a few thinkers dominate the landscape. Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, and a handful of others have shaped the world of economics and influenced our lives. These 10 lectures acquaint you with the thoughts, theories, and lives of these great economists.

The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It

In March 2006, the world's richest men sipped champagne in an opulent New York hotel. They were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with Â­million-dollar stakes. At the card table that night was Peter Muller, who managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called PDT. With him was Ken Griffin, who was the tough-as-nails head of Citadel Investment Group. There, too, were Cliff Asness, the founder of the hedge fund AQR Capital Management, and Boaz Weinstein, king of the credit-default swap.

Publisher's Summary

Author of the extremely popular "Dear Economist" column in Financial Times, Tim Harford reveals the economics behind everyday phenomena in this highly entertaining and informative book. Can a book about economics be fun to read? It can when Harford takes the reins, using his trademark wit to explain why it costs an arm and a leg to buy a cappuccino and why it's nearly impossible to purchase a decent used car. Supermarkets, coffee houses, airlines, insurance companies, and more are sucking money from our wallets. To protect ourselves and our bank accounts, we must better understand why companies do what they do.

This is a basic economic theory book which is logical and substantiated. The reader has a very British accent, is entertaining but somewhat monotone. I recommend this book if you are a little rusty on economics. Most of us would be best to hear this to support our own political views or possibly to change our political views. The book also answers many questions; why are poor nations poor? Why is China so successful as compared to India? What happened to India previously? What are negative externalities? What are the problems with the American and British health plans and what is the best way to solve the insurance problem? He is both conservative and sometimes liberal, so we can say middle of the road. He is fair. Sometimes the book is humorous at least as much as an economics text can be.

Harford explains lucidly how the free market determines how resources are allocated, why it seems to work well much of the time, why it fails under some circumstances, and what sort of government actions would appropriately address those failures. Much of the latter half of the book is devoted to the effects of increased global trade, including a whole chapter on the miraculous success of China. I didn't find all of it well argued; for example, his argument that globalization is not significantly harmful to the environment was painted in broad strokes and not well-supported. But overall, this book is an enjoyable elucidation of the world's dominant economic model, and should be read by anyone who... well, votes.

Very good treatment of the economic concepts that we often ponder but for which we have no definitive solutions. Using an inductive approach the author explains a simple model for defining scarcity and its effects and then applies it to a number of tangential yet relevant areas. Very mind expanding for the economically curious.

Computer Programmer and Worship Leader. Have enjoyed reading since my mom got me hooked on Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie prior to my teen years. My brother got me hooked on audio books after I started having a longer commute to work.
Love a variety of genres.

I listened to this audiobook over a year ago and can't believe how many things in life I've seen that ring true with what the author has to say in this book. I actually found myself re-listening to parts of the book - somethig I almost NEVER do!

Probably the most interesting treatise in the book is the discussion about why poor countries stay poor. Having traveled to Cambodia recently, and to Russia right after the fall of Communism, the things the author said about this topic really seemed to hold water. However, had I not read this book, I never would have seen the common thread between the two.

In some ways, this book reminds me of "Freakonomics", but seems more profound and well thought out.

Liked it so well, that I bought his other audiobook.

Only criticsim (and a small one) is that the author can tend to "overexplain" his position. But, it's a small issue - and the book's content and benefit easily transcend this issue.

Making the dismal science a little less dismal is something the Undercover Economist has accomplished. As a fan of boring books, I found this one a little less boring. The biggest problem is that the recording was completed in 2005. Many aspects related to economics changed greatly post-recession of 2008 and therefore seem a little less realistic. The reader is excellent. I could listen to him read the phone book!

I would absolutely recommend this book. Listen to this book, and you can skip your undergrad Econ 101 course - you'll already know everything in it, without ever having to draw a single supply-and-demand graph.

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Tim Harford is an incomparable master of clear and simple, yet effective explanation of difficult concepts.

Really enjoyed his discussion about markets, both their power and limits. Harford doesn't try to explain too much with his theories, and the conclusions he does draw are well supported. If you like books like Freakonomics, you will like this as well.

I was very disappointed in this book and want my 10 hours back....you can keep the money! was embarrassed for anyone who listens to this who doesn't know that supply and demand are basic to economics which is lectured about over and over again in this book. I was pulled in by the idea that essays were going to clue me in to stuff I didn't already know but this was not the case. Honestly, I was appalled at the dumb-downedness of this book and could have overlooked this if there were more than just a few interesting facts about products and how they are sold. Disappointed.

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